Jennifer Lorenz is committed to conservation

Jennifer Lorenz, executive director of the Bayou Land Conservancy, stands at the Spring Creek Greenway.

Jennifer Lorenz, executive director of the Bayou Land Conservancy, stands at the Spring Creek Greenway.

Photo: Michael Paulsen, Staff

Photo: Michael Paulsen, Staff

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Jennifer Lorenz, executive director of the Bayou Land Conservancy, stands at the Spring Creek Greenway.

Jennifer Lorenz, executive director of the Bayou Land Conservancy, stands at the Spring Creek Greenway.

Photo: Michael Paulsen, Staff

Jennifer Lorenz is committed to conservation

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The Deer Park prairie seemed doomed in early August. For a year and a half, a loose coalition of prairie-loving groups had tried to raise $4 million to buy the pristine 50-acre tract of Gulf Coast tall-grass prairie, one of the world's most endangered ecosystems. The land's owner, Dean Lawther, had been patient. But after a subdivision developer made a substantially higher offer on the land, Lawther worried that the prairie groups might never get their act together, and that he'd miss his chance to sell a major family asset. He gave the conservationists an Aug. 20 deadline. They'd miss it, he thought. But he figured he owed one last chance to Jennifer Lorenz.

Lorenz, the tenacious head of Bayou Land Conservancy, had taken over the fundraising effort late in the game. The prairie wasn't the Bayou Land Conservancy's usual kind of project: It was a prairie, not a bayou; and it was in Deer Park, southeast of Houston, not on the border of Harris and Montgomery Counties.

But the Bayou Land Conservancy specializes in saving land - "Conservation without funding is conversation," is Lorenz's motto - and she had never seen 50 acres that seemed so special. It wasn't just biodiverse, full of grasslands birds and more than 300 species of native plants. It was also close enough to an urban area that school kids and city dwellers could easily visit the wild place.

The deadline required what she called a "Hail Mary pass." With only weeks to work, she gave up on appeals to slow-moving corporations and big foundations, and concentrated on big fish, individual philanthropists. Terry Hershey, one of the founders of Houston's environmental movement, jump-started the campaign with a major donation. The Hamman Foundation gave $200,000, and other families contributed tens of thousands.

But to Lorenz's astonishment, small donors responded to her appeal in a big way. One man pledged to donate his 1951 Studebaker. Retirees - one identified herself as a "little old lady in tennis shoes" - pledged $10 and $25. Students from the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts waved signs at the corner of Westheimer and Montrose, requesting donations. Prairie pleas ricocheted through email and Facebook, and $50 and $100 donations poured into the Bayou Land Conservancy's website. Lorenz, giddy, said that the "grassroots effort" was catching on "like a prairie wildfire." The conservationists did their best to fan the flames.

They'd raised only $3.2 million by the deadline, but their newfound success and the threat of Lorenz's tears convinced Lawther to extend the deadline until Sept. 10. With only hours to spare, the conservationists met their new goal. In the end, the thousand-plus donors included Lawther's own family.

These days, Native Prairies Association of Texas manages what's now called the Lawther Deer Park Prairie. It's expected to open to the public this year. A conservation easement guarantees that the land will never be developed.

Perhaps even more important than that precious 50 acres, though, is the model it created for Houston conservation. "The people-powered prairie," as Lorenz, calls it, showed that small donors can make a big difference in wild places' survival. And it showed the difference that one person who is passionate about a cause can have in our community.

With her leadership, Lorenz is our pick as the Houstonian whose work has had the most significant impact on conservation.